Assignment: Read "Lillian" by David Cale. The first monologue play in the book, Talk To Me.
News: The World of Storytelling is expected to be in by Wednesday. Please have a copy with you for class on Friday.
Today we met in the Belk Theatre to watch Gwenda LedBetter perform a section of her show, Friday's Father.
Consider that a generation of theatre artists embarked on a "hero's journey" into the world of storytelling and are making their return to the stage with the boon of their experience. Gwenda's work may be an example of this returning.
Comments following the performance:
Caitlin noted that the storyteller enjoys the prerogative of commenting on the story, introducing a personal reaction, etc. in short, being herself. As opposed to the actor bound in an impersonation.
Chip suggested the idea of the "actor's contract" and asked what the "storyteller's contract" might be.
What are the unspoken agreements between teller and listener and how might they be different from the expectation of actors?
The discussion raises concerns about the role of the actor similar to those explored by Bertolt Brecht in the 1930's and formulated by him as a style he named "epic". Note that Brecht was greatly influenced by the work of Meyerhold (biomechanics) and was doing his pioneering work in Germany at the same time that Decroux was developing his "corporeal mime" in France.
Links for more: Brecht's Epic Actor, Meyerhold's Biomechanics, Decroux's Corporeal Mime.
Also, an interesting sampling of Decroux's work on film.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Aspects of Stories
We talked in class about the possibility of common traits of story telling. One that seemed to show itself in the documentary and in my observations of other people telling stories is that each one seems to have a point. I know it seems a little obvious, but it seems to be beautiful in its simplicity. Each story at some point, usually the end carries some sort of moral, or punch line that the rest of the story was leading up to. Granted that all the stories that we have encountered so far have a western origin and it seems that, like western music, western storytelling is more concerned with becoming rather than being. Another common denominator seems to be that the stories we have heard have a direct emotional connection with the audience. That is to say that a story must appeal to the audiences emotion on some level, thus establishing a connection between the story teller and the audience. Thirdly, the stories appear to be didactic in some way or another, each one speaks to some quality or moral that people can relate to. Even the story of the bees emphasize cleverness, the "what killed the dog story" displays some value as to attachment to material things. These are the only common denominators I can see for now. Any thoughts?
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Day 5
We met Gewnda LedBetter and discussed with her the storytelling revival and her path into becoming Asheville's "Story Lady" for the local "Mr. Bill Show" and Pack Library.
I shared an interview with Laura Simms from the book The Storytellers Journey: an American Revival, by Joseph Daniel Sobol. In the interview, Laura explains her epiphany about storytelling and describes the separation from her theatre group, La Mama Experimental Theatre Club in 1960's.
I made comparison to Plato's allegory of the cave dwellers in which one member leaves the cave and discovers a new, real, world outside. Ironically both the new storytellers and the new actors were pursing similar goals of making new connections between audience and performer and bringing new vitality to the theatre. We viewed sections of a documentary about The Open Theatre, founded by director, Joseph Chaiken. Chaiken was greatly influenced by mythographer Joseph Campbell, especially his masterwork The Masks of God. Again, in Campbell's work, we find common ground with the new storytellers.
Vis-a-vis the experimental theatre movement, Joseph Chaiken came from the Living Theatre, founded in 1947, arguably America's oldest experimental theatre group. Theatre revivalism began much earlier. Following Stanislavski's revolutionary theatre work with Anton Chekov and The Moscow Arts Theatre, Vesvolod Meyerhold pushes for even more radical rethinking of theatre forms. Meanwhile, in the 1920s in Paris, Etienne Decroux, a socialist theatre artist, began to rebuild the theatre in his own way. Decroux created a form of actor-centered theatre that he called “Dramatic Corporal Mime.” His students included Jean-Louis Barrault, Jacques LeCoq, and Marcel Marceau. Marceau, more than the others, brought this art form to prominence in America and the world. Yet Decroux was not interested in the kind of pantomime we saw commercialized in America in imitation of Marceau. He wanted a radical stripping down of theatre to its essence: the actor in action. In 1931, he articulated a formula for the rehabilitation of theatre, the first three points of which were:
1. For a period of thirty years, prohibit all arts other than the actor’s. Substitute for the set of the play the set of the theatre, the backdrop of all imaginable actions.
2. During the first ten years, eliminate all elevation from the stage such as benches, stairs, terraces, balconies, etc. Actors shall suggest the ideas of “above” and “below,” although one partner may be beside the other. Then allow elevations only on the condition that they create greater challenges for the actor.
3. During the first twenty years, prohibit all voiced sound. After twenty years, allow unarticulated cries for five years. Finally, during the last five years allow words contrived by the actor [italics added] (Angotti and Herr, 1974).
I shared an interview with Laura Simms from the book The Storytellers Journey: an American Revival, by Joseph Daniel Sobol. In the interview, Laura explains her epiphany about storytelling and describes the separation from her theatre group, La Mama Experimental Theatre Club in 1960's.
I made comparison to Plato's allegory of the cave dwellers in which one member leaves the cave and discovers a new, real, world outside. Ironically both the new storytellers and the new actors were pursing similar goals of making new connections between audience and performer and bringing new vitality to the theatre. We viewed sections of a documentary about The Open Theatre, founded by director, Joseph Chaiken. Chaiken was greatly influenced by mythographer Joseph Campbell, especially his masterwork The Masks of God. Again, in Campbell's work, we find common ground with the new storytellers.
Vis-a-vis the experimental theatre movement, Joseph Chaiken came from the Living Theatre, founded in 1947, arguably America's oldest experimental theatre group. Theatre revivalism began much earlier. Following Stanislavski's revolutionary theatre work with Anton Chekov and The Moscow Arts Theatre, Vesvolod Meyerhold pushes for even more radical rethinking of theatre forms. Meanwhile, in the 1920s in Paris, Etienne Decroux, a socialist theatre artist, began to rebuild the theatre in his own way. Decroux created a form of actor-centered theatre that he called “Dramatic Corporal Mime.” His students included Jean-Louis Barrault, Jacques LeCoq, and Marcel Marceau. Marceau, more than the others, brought this art form to prominence in America and the world. Yet Decroux was not interested in the kind of pantomime we saw commercialized in America in imitation of Marceau. He wanted a radical stripping down of theatre to its essence: the actor in action. In 1931, he articulated a formula for the rehabilitation of theatre, the first three points of which were:
1. For a period of thirty years, prohibit all arts other than the actor’s. Substitute for the set of the play the set of the theatre, the backdrop of all imaginable actions.
2. During the first ten years, eliminate all elevation from the stage such as benches, stairs, terraces, balconies, etc. Actors shall suggest the ideas of “above” and “below,” although one partner may be beside the other. Then allow elevations only on the condition that they create greater challenges for the actor.
3. During the first twenty years, prohibit all voiced sound. After twenty years, allow unarticulated cries for five years. Finally, during the last five years allow words contrived by the actor [italics added] (Angotti and Herr, 1974).
Monday, Jan 22
Please come to the Belk theatre for class this Monday. Gwenda LedBetter will be performing act one of Friday's Father a solo storytelling play.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Day 4
Absent: Drew
We viewed the last half of our documentary and began to discuss some of the defining characteristics of the storytelling revival: the accommodation of children in the audience, the reciprocity between performer and listener, informality of presentation, etc.
ASSIGNMENT
in the comments to this post continue the discussion. Post at least 5 defining qualities of storytelling performance as viewed through the National Storytelling Festival.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Story Tally
Thanks to Chip, Alina, Drew, Cassie, and Carly for the story tally assignments.
Drew's list brings up the concept of "gists". Roger Schank refers to memory as involving the storage and retrieval of "story gists". We reduce an experience or a piece of information into a compressed form, similar to a file-compression program for the computer such as .zip or stuffit. That gist is retrieved and expanded when we make an association. For example, if I mentioned that my dog loved swimming and would jump in the water at the first opportunity, you might begin to associate any number of your gists with various ideas in my statement: dogs, water, pets, passion, etc...
Notice how, in your daily interactions with stories, one story will prompt another. Notice also, how we will discover lost memories in the act of conversation, essentially making active our dormant gists.
The concept of gists and of memory compression and retrieval has implications for performance. Firstly, many storytellers insist that they do not memorize their stories. Instead, they "learn" them. That is to say, they reduce the story to a gist that can be expanded in the act of telling in much the same way you might expand upon a memory in conversation. Secondly, in performance, the use of a literary or cultural allusion relies on the ability to activate the listeners' gists. If I say, "when I walked into the principal's office, I had a David-and-Goliath moment," I am activating your memory of the story of David and conflating it with my story.
Drew's list brings up the concept of "gists". Roger Schank refers to memory as involving the storage and retrieval of "story gists". We reduce an experience or a piece of information into a compressed form, similar to a file-compression program for the computer such as .zip or stuffit. That gist is retrieved and expanded when we make an association. For example, if I mentioned that my dog loved swimming and would jump in the water at the first opportunity, you might begin to associate any number of your gists with various ideas in my statement: dogs, water, pets, passion, etc...
Notice how, in your daily interactions with stories, one story will prompt another. Notice also, how we will discover lost memories in the act of conversation, essentially making active our dormant gists.
The concept of gists and of memory compression and retrieval has implications for performance. Firstly, many storytellers insist that they do not memorize their stories. Instead, they "learn" them. That is to say, they reduce the story to a gist that can be expanded in the act of telling in much the same way you might expand upon a memory in conversation. Secondly, in performance, the use of a literary or cultural allusion relies on the ability to activate the listeners' gists. If I say, "when I walked into the principal's office, I had a David-and-Goliath moment," I am activating your memory of the story of David and conflating it with my story.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Day 3
All Present
We continued viewing the documentary of the National Storytelling Festival 10th Anniversary.
We heard sample of Ray Hicks, Maggie Pierce, The Folktellers (Barbara Freeman and Connie Reagan-Blake), and Laura Simms.
We noticed the use of dialogue in the Folktellers performance of "No News, or, What killed The Dog". As a vaudeville routine the "story" dates back to turn-of-the-century entertainer, Nat M. Wills. The story has earlier variants (How the House Burned Down) that date back to the middle ages.
The point being that the storytelling revival has combined tent-meeting and rural "front porch" culture with stage forms. The national festival developed a showcase format to give audiences a "taste" of the various storytellers, using the term"olio" to describe the event. The term "olio" originally means "a miscellaneous mixture" ( Merrion-Webster online dictionary) in reference to food and comes to be applied to performance in the sense of "a miscellaneous collection (as of literary or musical selections)" coming from the minstrel show to vaudeville thence to storytelling.
We heard two "naive epiphany" narratives, one from Maggie Pierce and the other from Connie Reagan-Blake. The gist of such stories is: "I had no idea what this was until someone showed interest! then, surprise! I discovered I was a storyteller." The sense that storytelling as a vocation or avocation comes as a surprise reinforces the idea that it is somehow genuine, not contrived or intended, but fated.
We continued viewing the documentary of the National Storytelling Festival 10th Anniversary.
We heard sample of Ray Hicks, Maggie Pierce, The Folktellers (Barbara Freeman and Connie Reagan-Blake), and Laura Simms.
We noticed the use of dialogue in the Folktellers performance of "No News, or, What killed The Dog". As a vaudeville routine the "story" dates back to turn-of-the-century entertainer, Nat M. Wills. The story has earlier variants (How the House Burned Down) that date back to the middle ages.
The point being that the storytelling revival has combined tent-meeting and rural "front porch" culture with stage forms. The national festival developed a showcase format to give audiences a "taste" of the various storytellers, using the term"olio" to describe the event. The term "olio" originally means "a miscellaneous mixture" ( Merrion-Webster online dictionary) in reference to food and comes to be applied to performance in the sense of "a miscellaneous collection (as of literary or musical selections)" coming from the minstrel show to vaudeville thence to storytelling.
We heard two "naive epiphany" narratives, one from Maggie Pierce and the other from Connie Reagan-Blake. The gist of such stories is: "I had no idea what this was until someone showed interest! then, surprise! I discovered I was a storyteller." The sense that storytelling as a vocation or avocation comes as a surprise reinforces the idea that it is somehow genuine, not contrived or intended, but fated.
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